2024-09-25 19:18:29
Fraudsters are inventive when it comes to cheating people out of their money. We’ll show you which scams are currently in circulation.
Criminals are constantly trying to get sensitive account and credit card data as well as personal information from consumers. They primarily use digital channels to do this. Find out what tricks they use here.
The police in Thuringia are warning of so-called “shock calls” from fraudsters posing as police officers. Officers in the Apolda area were alerted to telephone fraudsters by several senior citizens. The senior citizens reported that a man had posed as a police officer on the phone and claimed that a family member had been involved in a serious traffic accident. One person had died in the accident and a bail of several thousand euros was now required for the accused to be released.
“Fortunately, none of those called followed this request and immediately informed the police,” wrote the Apolda police station, warning “strongly against this type of call” in which people are put under pressure by bad news and scaremongering. Another sign of such “shock calls” is that the caller tries to keep the person called on the line at all costs so that no questions can be asked from the police, relatives or friends.
Good news regarding foiled fraud also comes from North Rhine-Westphalia. Here, “Der Weseler Lokalkompass” reports that in the past few days several senior citizens reported “shock calls” to the police. They all recognized the scam and did the right thing: hung up.
Fraudsters in Saxony defrauded an elderly woman of 110,000 euros using the so-called cooking pot scam. In two other cases, elderly people gave the fraudsters 25,000 euros each, according to reports from the Dresden police. They only noticed the fraud later and notified the police.
In the so-called cooking pot scam, the perpetrators pretend to be police officers on the phone, usually to older people. During the conversation, they suggest to the seniors that a gang of thieves is on the move in their area, who can use a special tracking device called CC 15 to track down banknotes even inside houses and then deliberately break in.
The alleged police officers therefore advise putting the money in a pot where it cannot be located. At the same time, they offer to have a plainclothes officer collect the money and supposedly take it to safety. The real police, however, advise never to give money into the hands of strangers and not to let strangers into your home.
At the start of the new week, customers of the streaming portal Disney+ are in the spotlight of phishing. The subject of a fraudulent email that the consumer advice center warns about is “Please update your information.” The email informs customers that their subscription is supposedly suspended. The reason for this is that the bank has rejected the charge. Now the billing information should be updated via a link – otherwise the customer could lose their “benefits.”
An employee of the Federal Data Protection Commissioner calls and wants to help you get back money you lost: If that seems strange to you, you’re right. Fraudsters are currently abusing the name of a federal agency to make lure calls. They pretend to be employees of the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI) and supposedly offer their help.